Competing isomerizations: a combined experimental/theoretical study of phenylpentenone isomerism.

The possible competition of Z/E versus hydrogen-shift isomerization in (E)-5-phenyl-3-penten-2-one (E-1) and (E)-5-phenyl-4-penten-2-one (E-2) was studied, both experimentally and theoretically. Iodine-catalyzed isomerization experiments and computational modeling studies show that the equilibrated system consists predominantly of E-1 and E-2, with E-2 in moderate excess, and with no detectable amounts of the Z (cis) diastereoisomers. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations corroborated the free energy difference (Delta(r) and Delta(r) were -0.